1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to computer terminals, and more specifically concerns computer-controlled video displays and systems for using these video displays for creativity, education, thought triggering, problem solving, new idea generation, speed reading and speed learning.
2. Description of the Related Art
The conventional method of using a computercontrolled video display for the presentation of alphanumeric data is by sequentially displaying the individual characters, lines of characters, or pages of characters.
Individual characters are sequentially presented to the user when the characters become available at a rate that is relativeyy slow compared to the response time of the human visual system. This response time is on the order of about 20 milliseconds. Therefore, it is customary for individual characters to be sequentially displayed as they are manually typed as input from a keyboard or as they are received from a serial data link operated at data rates of about 300 baud or less.
Characters are typically displayed on a line-by-line basis during a "scrolling" operation. After a full page of alphanumeric data has been received and displayed, for example on a character-by-character basis, the first line on the page containing the first presented data is nearly instantaneously changed to display the data previously displayed in the second line on the page, the second line is nearly instantaneously changed to display the data previously displayed in the third line on the page, and so on, so that the data displayed on the last line on the page is cleared to receive new characters or replaced with a new line of data. Therefore, during the scrolling operation all of the displayed data very quickly jumps up (or down) by one line. It is customary to inhibit scrolling until a control key is activated, in which case all of the data scrolls by one line each time the control key is activated. The scrolling operation is typically used in word processing programs during the display and editing of multi-page documents.
Data are typically displayed on a page-by-page basis during the display of a multi-page document or during the use of "menu driven" software. In menu driven software, a page or menu of selections is displayed to the user, and in response to a selection signal from the user, the next page of data is chosen from a group of predetermined pages of data, some of wiich may contain different menus for further selections.
It is known to divide the screen of a video display into separate regions for displaying respective groups of data. One part of a display, for example, has been used to show interactive dialog between the user and a data base management system, and the other part of the display has been used for showing records retrieved by the data base management system.